January 2026
-
Poet Amy Lowell (1874–1925) was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. She is one of the poets most associated with the Imagist movement, along with H.D., Richard Aldington, and Ezra Pound. Imagism was a reactionary movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision, economy of language, and the use of sharp, concrete images. It stood in Read more
-
Though Marianne Moore (1887–1972) was born in Missouri, she became the quintessential New York City Modernist poet. The city and its “inhabitants” live in her poems, whether they be her beloved Bronx Bombers or a specific tree in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Over Christmas, Sue and I returned to NYC with my Minnesota daughter and son-in-law Read more
-
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all. -Wallace Stevens Read more
-
Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on November, 23, 2010 While today Percy Bysshe Shelley is generally recognized as one of the shining lights of English poetry, during his own lifetime and for a generation after his death he was not so widely Read more
-
The best way to learn about poetry is to read poetry, and to read poets talking about it. With that in mind, over the next month I will be highlighting a number of books that feature poets talking about poetry, beginning with the book Poetry and Ambition: Essays 1982–88 by Donald Hall. The greatest challenge in reviewing Read more
-
There is no poet that I have spent more time with than W.B. Yeats. I have read and reread his Collected Poems more times than I can count. If I had to get rid of all the books I own but one, his Collected Poems is the book I would keep. To my mind, there Read more
-
I think of a better way to begin a week than listening to Saint Jerry. Enjoy! Read more
-
Poet Louise Glück (1943-2023) was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Though she attended both Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, she never received a degree. Glück’s poems are spare, mythic, and beautiful. She doesn’t waste words or images. If poetry is defined as being Read more
-
The month of January here at ClimbingSky this year is dedicated to Poetry. It is something I read every day, wrestle with most days, and has been a constant in my life since my teen years. For those counting, that is five decades now and counting. I am not sure how many books of poetry, Read more
-
The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. -Dylan Thomas Read more
ClimbingSky 